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Show Me a Natural Arch / Natural Bridge!

krJoest said:
I think it's SNF
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If you're talking about the Devil's Bake Oven, it's not on SNF land. The arch in my picture is along the river bank and in fact is sometimes underwater when the river is high. You can reach it by walking along the shoreline north from the Devil's Backbone Campground.

There are some other arches at the top of the Devil's Bake Oven rock formation. I haven't been to those, although I have seen pictures. That is the area where the big foundry house stood and there are still foundations from it there. There might be some issues getting to them because of having to cross private property near the pipeline bridge tower. I'm not sure. That north road to the park used to be open, but now I think I saw that it's fenced and gated off. The ferry used to dock somewhere in that area when it still ran I think. Hard to believe, but at one time it seems they allowed the public to access the catwalk on the pipeline bridge! There is a picture on Bridgehunter.com taken by James Vaughn that shows a sign that was posted stating that the pipeline was closed at dark and anyone found on it would be arrested for trespassing.
 
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Natural Arch at Inspiration Point, La Rue Pine Hills Natural Area, Shawnee National Forest, Union County, Illinois. This small arch in the Bailey Limestone is located on the left hand side of the path leading from the trail out to Inspiration Point. This would not be a safe arch to try to climb down to due to the steep slope covered with loose rocks and the sharp dropoff just beyond it. Photograph taken 26 June 2021.P6264495.JPG
 
Jeff Ulrich said:
Natural Arch at Inspiration Point, La Rue Pine Hills Natural Area, Shawnee National Forest, Union County, Illinois. This small arch in the Bailey Limestone is located on the left hand side of the path leading from the trail out to Inspiration Point. This would not be a safe arch to try to climb down to due to the steep slope covered with loose rocks and the sharp dropoff just beyond it. Photograph taken 26 June 2021.View attachment 703
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This one is pretty hard to get up. I went up it with a friend during migration and we saw dozens of cottonmouth up there when we barely got up.
 
Shawn said:
This one is pretty hard to get up. I went up it with a friend during migration and we saw dozens of cottonmouth up there when we barely got up.
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Yikes, the arch is scary enough being you could fall a long way to your death if you started to slide on the loose rocks, let alone seeing venemous snakes along the way. I always wonder if anyone who has a fear of both heights and snakes, like the friend I mentioned, has bad dreams about being trapped out on Inspiration Point with dozens of snakes slithering towards them on the narrow ridge trail.
 
neidholdt said:
Stephen's Arch, Escalante Utah, span is 220 ft wide, 14th largest in the world. I have hiked underneath it on part of a two day backpack trip. Had to climb that cliff on the right to get to it.
View attachment 152View attachment 153
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I thought that arch looked familar, now I'm certain. In March 2012 I backpacked with a friend into Coyote Gulch. We entered thru Crack-In-The-Wall, then down a 600' sand dune. Stevens Arch is one of the first awesome sights we saw. We did NOT attempt climbing up to it.
 
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